Cain Velasquez glad he didn’t knock Junior dos Santos out early

A lot has been said about the toughness former UFC heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos displayed in his title-loss to Cain Velasquez at UFC 155. “Cigano” was hurt early and often in the bout, finding the inner strength to hold on and weather the relentless pounding of Velasquez throughout the 25-minute tilt.

Though Velasquez doesn’t deny Dos Santos did an excellent job at surviving, it turns out the newly named divisional king is actually happy he didn’t put his foe away early on in the main event match-up.

“I’m kind of glad (I) didn’t get that knockout in the first round cause then (people) would have been like, ‘Oh, well Cain knocked him out in the first round…HE caught HIM.’ At least we got to do the whole five rounds where I won every round,” admitted Velasquez in an interview with Middle Easy, adding he initially thought the referee was going to step in and stop things.

“For a split second I did,” explained Velasquez. “There just wasn’t enough power in those punches on the ground so I was like, ‘Ah, he’s gonna recover. That’s fine. I’ll just soften him up.’”

As for what’s next, Velasquez pointed to the winner of an upcoming clash between Alistair Overeem-Antonio Silva, also stating he would be heading back to the gym right away to work on improving even if he looked like an unbeatable force in his most recent rumble.

“Guys are gonna get better over time. The sport is so new still, people are still evolving so (I’ve) gotta keep evolving,” said the 11-1 Velasquez.